BT Sport drop Halsey from live coverage after former Premier League ref calls for head of officials chief Riley

BT Sport have dropped controversial former Premier League referee Mark Halsey from their live game coverage following the fall-out from his incendiary comments in a national newspaper column last weekend.

Halsey strongly criticised the standard of refereeing this season and called for the head of Professional Game Match Officials boss Mike Riley. Since then Halsey has been absent from his regular place in the commentary box for the three live games over the last seven days.

BT spokespeople insisted Halsey would be back in the TV booth as usual for today’s Manchester United v Newcastle game. However, on Friday it emerged that Halsey would no longer be on the gantry at live matches but banished to a studio role.

Removed: Former Premier League referee Mark Halsey (left), pictured here with Wayne Rooney and Ryan Giggs, has had his role at BT Sport changed

The new BT line was: ‘Mark Halsey is a regular contributor. This weekend he will feature on BT Sport panel, the Saturday morning chat show hosted by Tim Lovejoy.’

The Premier League claim there has been no interference from them about Halsey’s future on BT Sport.

But the Halsey camp believe that PL chief executive Richard Scudamore made his complaints direct to BT chief Marc Watson — even though Scudamore has been away on the Prime Minister’s trade mission in China.

Halsey’s side also claim that Riley brought up the PL’s desire to get the ex-official removed from his BT Sport position at the referee’s meeting at St George’s Park this week — a version of events again disputed by the PL.

The FA looked at the Tivoli Ecoresort complex in Bahia, an hour’s drive from Salvador, as a possible hotel base for the World Cup before plumping for Rio.

The Tivoli is where the FIFA high command chose to stay this week, surrounded by monkeys, turtles and iguanas, rather than on the ridiculous holiday camp official draw resort site, Costa do Sauipe — although some of the super fussy FIFA ExCo were less than impressed with their rooms at the Tivoli.

The official eve-of-draw reception also
took place at the Tivoli, where there was a united view among over 1,000
global diners about how ludicrous it was to stage the draw in remote
Bahia in a £2m temporary tent.

It sums up all the craziness around FIFA —
not least that the final say in holding the event in the Brazilian
outback was with Ricardo Teixeira, the disgraced former overlord of
Brazilian Football.

ITV Sport will have first pick of England games, ahead of the BBC, for their shared coverage of World Cup matches.

This follows a contract detailing the exact process for the alternate choices following a joint desire to end the months of wrangling between the two networks.

First choice: ITV are likely to broadcast England's World Cup opener against Italy (pictured)

ITV are sure to go for one of England’s
group games — most likely the first match against Italy in Manaus,
provided FIFA change the scheduled kick-off of 2am UK time — to bank on
the advertising revenue.

Neither station will have a knock-out stage
game as their opening choice because of the doubts whether Roy Hodgson and his team will make it out of Group D.

England were waiting until Friday night’s draw before fine-tuning their preparations for Brazil. And one possibility is still to play both warm-up games in Miami rather than the first one at a venue further north.

The potential opponents, United States, might not fit into manager Hodgson’s plans now and it would cut down on pre-tournament flights when they face a gruelling travel schedule starting in Manaus for the three group games.

Big decisions: Roy Hodgson could change England's plans ahead of the World Cup after discovering where his side will play in Brazil

Pele keeps it low key

Pele’s low-key appearance at the World Cup draw ceremony, with a brief interview on stage, hardly provided the ‘wow factor’ promised by FIFA.

It transpires the world’s greatest player is only a ‘symbolic’ World Cup ambassador for the government rather than a paid official.

Money is very important to Legends 10 — run by former Spurs director Paul Kemsley — who paid millions for Pele’s lifetime image rights in 2012.

They quoted well over £100,000 as Pele’s price to attend the Brazil friendly match against South Korea in Seoul last October.

Famous face: Pele applauds the audience ahead of Friday's World Cup draw in Bahia, Brazil